The Ghost of Christmas Future
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: It's always the darkest before the dawn. But Methos finds the longer he lives, the darker it gets.
1. Chapter 1

Ghost of Christmas Future

It was a cold day in December in the year 1951 and Methos, under his latest identity, was off to spend an afternoon at the movie theater with his wife. Her name was Janice Hardy, she was 27 years old, she stood little over five feet tall, had a head full of long blonde and brown hair, and she had no idea what her husband was. They had met a few years ago during an air raid and had been blissfully married for three years now, and he hoped they had many more together.

"They've already redone this film so many times already," Janice said, "I wonder how different this one is going to be."

For two weeks she had talked his ear off of wanting to see the new Christmas Carol movie; Methos was already tired of the story, he'd only been seeing depictions of it since it was first written 108 years ago. But there wasn't any point in telling Janice that, she wanted to see the movie, so they were on their way to see the movie.

As they came upon the town's movie house, Methos stopped in his tracks and pulled his wife back with him. He felt dizzy and he had a stabbing pain in the back of his head and he knew what it all meant.

"What's the matter, Adam?" she asked him.

He started looking around, trying to figure out where it was coming from, who it was.

"Well, do thine eyes deceive me?" he heard.

Oh no, he knew that voice. He looked and saw his long separated brother, Kronos, come from around the corner and he came up to the two of them. Methos couldn't help but notice how vastly different his brother appeared now, in comparison to when they last met. Instead of his usual armor, he was dressed these days in a black suit that either looked like he cleaned chimneys, or hauled off dead bodies. Either way it seemed to fit him.

"Fancy running into you here, Brother," he said.

"Adam," Janice turned towards her husband, "Who is this?"

"Allow me to introduce myself," Kronos said as he tipped his black hat to her, "I'm his brother, Sydney. We've been…rather distant from one another over the years, haven't we brother?"

Methos was getting the idea that he and his wife were in no immediate danger, least of all from his brother. He forced himself to smile and said, "You seem to be coming up in the world, you look like a gravedigger."

"You're not far off," Kronos told him, "And what are you and your…" he looked to Janice again, "Lovely wife up to these days?"

"We're going to see the new movie of Dickens' Christmas Carol," Janice answered, "Have you seen it?"

"I have not," Kronos answered, "It looks like we'll be going in together."

There was something about the way he said that that made Methos feel uneasy about the whole thing. Still, he didn't think his brother would be dumb enough to try something in public, so they went up to the front, got their tickets, headed in, found a row of seats at the front and spent the next hour and a half laughing as they watched Alastair Sim being tortured by four characters from beyond the grave, only to act in the end as if he had truly gone crazy.

Janice was still laughing when the movie ended and the three of them got up to leave. She wasn't able to start talking again until they'd gotten out into the street.

"Oh I loved that movie," she said, "We should come back and see it again soon. There's just one thing I don't understand."

"What's that?" Methos asked.

"His sister…is she supposed to be older than he is or younger?" Janice asked.

"I…" Methos had to stop and think, "I don't know."

"I get the impression they usually try for younger," Kronos commented, "Except they didn't do that here."

"No," Janice agreed, "They said his mother died giving birth to him, and since Fan was his sister, she had to have been born first, but she didn't look like an older sister."

"That's just something they added for this retelling of it," Methos insisted, "I have never seen it done in any other version...at least I don't think they have, who can tell anymore?"

Janice looked over to Kronos and said, "Sydney, would you like to come and have dinner with us tonight?"

"I'm afraid that's not possible," he answered, giving a slight, knowing look over to his brother, "But I'll see about catching up with you two some other time, for now, I must be off."

"I'd say that's a safe bet," Methos commented.

"Shut up," Kronos told him, and turned at the corner and quickly disappeared.

"He's an unusual one, your brother," Janice told Methos.

"Tell me about it," he replied.

"How come you never told me you had a brother?" she asked.

"We haven't been on speaking terms with each other for years," Methos said, "I hadn't planned on seeing him again, so I didn't see any point in it."

"He doesn't seem all that bad," she said.

"You don't know him like I do," he explained.

"That's true," she agreed, "Still, he seemed nice."

"Only because you were around," Methos told her, "When it's just the two of us, it's a whole other story. For years he's delighted in torturing me, he just _has_ to make my life a living hell, it's his purpose, it's his pleasure."

"I suppose so," Janice said, "But I don't know…I get a feeling from him…I think you mean more to him than you give yourself credit for."

Methos scoffed and said, "I wouldn't bet on that."

* * *

Methos stood hunched over, face to face so to speak, with the tombstone before him. It was one of the largest tombstones in the cemetery, and he could recite the epitaph with his eyes shut:

Janice Wilhelmina. Hardy

1924 – 1977

Beloved wife and sister

Rest in Peace

He should've remembered it by now, he'd only been reading it for the last 15 years when he buried her. She had been number 68, and as far as he was concerned, 68 would be where it stopped. He was getting too old for this. He'd fall in love with some beautiful woman, they'd get married, spend a few years together, and then she'd die and he'd be left there to grieve for several years, only for the whole process to start again.

Finally he couldn't stand on his feet anymore so he fell on his knees, and he was so close to the granite marker now that he was about touching it. Why did he insist on torturing himself all the time? That's what he wanted to know. Why did he keep coming out to this damn bone yard and looking at this stone? What was he trying to accomplish by punishing himself?

He felt the presence of another Immortal nearby and he knew who it was, but he didn't get up to meet them, and he didn't move at all. He heard the person coming up behind him, he could hear the footsteps crunching against the dead grass, until finally the other person was right behind him.

He felt two strong arms snake around his waist and pull him away from the tombstone and help him to his feet.

"At ease, Methos," Kronos told him.

Methos turned around and saw his brother, who was dressed all in black, was wearing black sunglasses and had gotten his hair cut extremely short. Methos wanted to make some comment about how it was a drastic change from how Kronos had looked the last time they'd met, but he hadn't the strength for it, he could feel his body collapsing against his brother's. Kronos held him close for a moment before turning towards the graveyard's entrance and said, "Come on, it's time to go."

They left the cemetery, walking alongside each other, and came to the black car parked right outside the gates. Silas stood by the car and watched his two brothers as they came over to him. Kronos said nothing and just nodded his head slightly, a sign that things were to go on as planned. He and Methos got into the back and Silas got in the front and drove away from the graveyard. Methos didn't say anything to his brothers and he just closed his eyes to rest a while. Kronos draped a protective arm around his brother's back and pulled Methos over to him and held him for the next hour as they left the town and the past behind them and headed off to see their other brother.

A couple of months ago it had been found out that Caspian was still alive, the only announcement that could prove more shocking than this was that he had gotten married. His wife was also an Immortal, and he wanted the others to come out and see him and meet her. This was a revelation so shocking to the other brothers that it had to be seen to be believed.

An hour later, they came to the place that Caspian was said to be living at now. Kronos woke Methos up as they came to a stop. Methos looked out at the barren piece of land in the middle of nowhere and saw the large three story house, and looking back at his brother, he took off Kronos' sunglasses and put them on himself. They got out of the car and headed up to the large front porch.

"It doesn't even look like anybody's living out here," Methos noted.

"We'll find out soon," Kronos told him.

They went up on the porch and knocked on the door. A moment later they felt another quickening, but when the door opened, the sight before them wasn't the one they were expecting. A woman stood in the doorway; she looked about 24, she was very tall and skinny and looked like a boy, she had short curly hair and was wearing a white T-shirt, jean shorts, and a pair of black sunglasses.

"Go away, we don't want any," she said as she slammed the door in their faces and walked away.

"I like her," Methos dryly commented to Kronos.

They heard a man in the house screaming at the woman and then they felt another quickening approaching the door, and when it opened they saw Caspian, looking none the worse for wear since the last time they saw him.

"Greetings, brother," Kronos said, and hinting to the woman they had seen, "Your wife?"

"Well she's not the cleaning woman, that's for damn sure," Caspian replied, and held the door open, "Come in."

"So what's new and different?" Methos asked.

"Much, obviously," Caspian answered. He let Kronos and Methos inside but slammed the door in Silas's face. The knob turned and Silas helped himself in.

"Where'd she disappear to?" Kronos asked.

"Probably back under the rock she came from," Caspian said, "Only I could never get that lucky. Mouth!" he called to the back of the house, "Get out here and meet my brothers."

"Mouth?" the other men asked.

The woman returned, still not looking pleased at the new set of strangers. "What is it?" she asked.

"Why do you call her Mouth?" Methos asked Caspian.

"Because she never stops eating and she never stops talking," Caspian explained.

"So what else is a wife for?" she asked as she walked over to her husband, who only replied cynically, "I don't know…making babies?"

Mouth leaned in to her husband and warned him, "Don't be sexist dear," and with a quick movement of the hand, grabbed the crotch of his jeans and gave him a tight squeeze until he was bent over and choking.

Methos poked Kronos on the shoulder to get his attention, and when his brother turned to look at him, he said, "It's official, I _really_ like her."

"Yes," Kronos noted, "But polygamy was never your thing."

Within a short amount of time they were caught up on what their brother had been up to for the last several decades, along with all the specifics about his wife. She was 47 years old, she had become Immortal when she was 22 and they had been married for nearly 25 years, and she wasn't a good fighter but she was a great cheater on account of she often carried a gun and she knew damn well how to use it, and in the few years she had been Immortal, she had already taken 30 heads.

"But you still haven't explained _why_ you married her," Methos said.

"He's still trying to figure that one out himself," Mouth replied.

"Alright, why did _you_ marry him?" Kronos asked her.

She shrugged her shoulders helplessly and answered, "What can I say? I'm a sadist, I _must_ be for marrying him."

"That sounds about right," Methos said.

"I suppose you three bohos intend to stay the night, is that right?" Mouth asked.

"That was the general impression we got," Kronos answered.

"Fine," she replied, "We can put you guys straight down from our room."

"Uh..exactly how thick are the walls in this house?" Methos inquired.

"You won't have to worry about that," Mouth told him, "The last time your brother and I had sex was when Ziggy Stardust was still alive."

Methos choked on a laugh and said to Caspian, "I'm starting to see _why_ you call her Mouth."

"Try living with her," was his brother's response.

* * *

That night while Methos, Kronos and Silas slept in the rooms that had been assigned to them, Caspian and his wife entered the umpteenth round of a fight that went on in their bedroom almost every night. Caspian had always said that his wife had the mentality of a 14 year old; as if to emphasize on this, every night she crawled into bed and kept the bright overhead lights on as she read boys' mystery and adventure stories. And almost every night, the two tried to kill each other over the matter of the lights.

"If it's darkness you want, go in the closet and hang from the bar like a good bat," she told him.

"Shut up," Caspian said as he kicked her out of the bed.

With an excited yelp, Mouth fell on the floor and took half the covers with her.

"That's it," she said as she got up, "I don't need to take this abuse from you, I've got guys lined up all over the world just waiting to treat me like crap."

"Good!" Caspian remarked, "Go drive one of them into an insomnia-induced homicidal frenzy and leave me alone."

"Gladly!" Mouth replied as she jerked out the sheet from under him and took it with her. Caspian picked up something from the nightstand and hurled it at her head but it hit the door as she closed it behind her. Instead of opening the door again to say what was on her mind, she yelled at the door, knowing her voice would travel through to her husband, "Oh yeah? Well good riddance ya loony!" and as she heard the sound of glass breaking in the room, she staggered down the hall to the room where they had put Methos. Without knocking, she stormed into the room and closed the door behind her, saying only to the man in bed, "Mind if I come in?"

"I guess not," Methos replied as he sat up, and he noticed that Mouth was unknowingly dragging the bedcovers behind her as she walked. "What happened to you?"

"Your brother and I got into a fight and he kicked me out for the night," she answered as she flopped down on the bed beside him.

"What was the fight about?" Methos asked.

"Oh the same one we've been having for 10 years," she answered, "Every night he wants to go to sleep, and I want to read, and he hates the lights being on."

Methos started to laugh, "Are you serious?"

"You've been married?" Mouth asked him. Methos nodded. "Then you know that some things are just universal," she added, "No matter what you are, if you get married you will still fight to the death over the dumbest things."

Methos turned away from her and said only in response, "How true that is."

Mouth's eyes narrowed as she looked at him and she told him, "You strike me as being a very weird person…you're always so serious, aren't you?"

"I guess so," he answered.

"Why is that?" Mouth asked.

He looked at her and asked her, "Do you know how old I am?"

"Older than dirt, so what?" she asked.

"I'm sure even you can understand that living 5,000 years and enduring all that comes with it can become a bit…overwhelming."

Either Mouth didn't get it or she did and was just playing stupid, "Overwhelming?"

"Depressing," he amended himself.

"You want to talk depressing," Mouth said, "When I was 19, my brother died, and you know the expression 'I die a little every day'?" Methos nodded, "Well I sat down and started to crunch some numbers, and I applied that phrase to my situation and I concluded that at the rate I was going at, it would kill me a little every day until I was 30 and kill me completely…and what do you think happened? I died at 22 instead! Now if that's not depressing, I don't know what is."

Methos couldn't help laughing, he fell back against the pillows and threw his head back and laughed like a crazy person.

"That's more like it," Mouth told him, "I'm running a house here, not a funeral parlor, so I would appreciate it if you bothered to act alive."

Methos thought of something else and asked her, "Why does my brother call you Mouth?"

"Because we both agreed it was one hell of an improvement over my real name," she answered.

"What's that?" Methos asked.

"Well I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," she told him.

"That's nothing new to me," he replied.

* * *

"So what do you think about Caspian's wife?" Methos asked Kronos the next morning as they wandered around the yard to get a better look at the place.

"I think he should've stamped her 'return to sender' and tried again," Kronos answered.

"Well, I like her," Methos said.

Kronos scoffed and looked at him, "You would."

"Still can't figure out why he married her though," Methos said.

"Well why did you get married?" Kronos asked him.

"Now let's not go there," he said.

As they talked, they headed around to the back and they both stopped suddenly when they saw something up ahead. They took a few steps closer to make sure that they weren't just seeing things, but they could tell that there was no mistake as to what they were seeing. Seven wooden crosses all lined up in a row in the backyard, like grave markers.

"Gives a whole new meaning to the term 'family plot', doesn't it?" Methos asked.

"What the hell is this?" Kronos asked as they went up for a closer look.


	2. Chapter 2

Methos and Kronos went up to get a closer look at the wooden markers. All the crosses had names on them, only first names and all men's names, but none of them were ringing any bells for the two brothers. They felt another quickening and turned around and saw Caspian approaching them.

"Well," he said, "I see you found our gravesite."

"Who's buried here?" Methos asked.

"This is the pet cemetery," Caspian told them.

"The what?"

Caspian didn't explicitly say Mouth, but he told them, "She hates dogs, always has."

Methos and Kronos looked back at the crosses and Methos said, "She killed them? All of them?"

Caspian wouldn't go into many details but explained that she had kicked and stomped several of them to death; what seemed to do the trick was their barking, she could only listen to it for so long before she went out to the backyard and killed them to shut them up.

"I guess there _is_ a bright side to Immortals not having children," Methos murmured to Kronos.

"Exactly _where_ did you two meet?" Kronos asked.

"Who remembers?" Caspian replied, "Anymore it just seems that I woke up one day and she was there, like a wart."

"But you two have managed somehow to get this far without killing each other," Methos noted.

"It's not for lack of trying, believe me," Caspian said with a shake of his head.

"Now don't tell me you're starting to lose your touch," Kronos said, "You being outdone by that woman?"

"Not merely outdone," Mouth said as she joined the three men in the backyard, "Outsmarted, an area that is not his expertise."

"I know what you mean," Methos said as he glanced over at Kronos.

* * *

"This certainly is a big place you have," Methos told Mouth later that afternoon as he got a better look at the place.

"Well it should be," she told him, "It was a House of Prayer about 30 years ago, then the place was foreclosed or condemned or something, and nobody's used it since, not until we came around."

Methos started laughing, "My brother Caspian living in a church, somehow I just can't see it."

"Well," she replied, "It's out of the way of civilization, no neighbors, nobody to complain about the noise…"

"And it's a rarity for your home to be your sanctuary," Methos said, "That's very smart."

"Have you ever done it?" Mouth asked.

"A couple of times," Methos said, "I wouldn't mind doing it again except…it wouldn't be a possibility right now."

"Why not?" she asked him.

"It's a long story," he said, not wanting to get into the whole mess of the Watchers right now.

"You ought to move in with us," Mouth told him, "It could certainly liven things up around here."

"A tempting offer," Methos said, "But I think I'll have to pass."

* * *

The months passed, fall turned to winter, and winter to spring, and then in the middle of April, Methos, Silas and Kronos returned to their brother's home again, but for different reasons this time. Methos came with the bad news that the apartment he lived in was being sold, and under his current identity he couldn't afford to move into a more permanent establishment, so for the time being he was going to have to take them up on their previous offer. Kronos and Silas arrived with much luggage and the bad news that the house they owned in Texas had been destroyed by a tornado and that they would be staying with Caspian and his wife until further notice. The brothers were greeted with fully open arms but only half full smiles.

"I get the impression that we're not wanted here," Methos confided in Kronos as they unpacked.

"Who cares?" Kronos responded, "We're family, we stay whether we're wanted or not."

Methos rolled his eyes and said, "It's no wonder you never married."

"I was married," Kronos told him.

"When?"

Kronos looked at him for a minute before replying, "Never mind. So what have you been up to that I don't know about?"

"Well, I'm thinking it's time I did something new with Adam Pierson," Methos said, and before he could continue he could already hear Kronos groaning in the anticipation of what he had in mind, "I've been in the Watchers for almost 10 years now, my furthest status is a mild mannered graduate student."

"So what?"

"So it's getting a little boring," Methos answered.

"And what do you plan to do now?" Kronos asked.

"I thought I'd apply as a professor at the university."

He heard no words in response from Kronos at first, only snickering, followed by, "And that's not boring?"

"It'll be a nice change of pace," Methos told him, "I've got to do something with him otherwise people are going to start getting curious and asking questions."

"Ah," Kronos nodded, "So your solution is spending your days hiding out in a stuffy classroom, the perfect place where asking questions is prohibited." He turned and saw Methos looked irritated by his response, "Come on, Brother, it's common knowledge you're not that good of a teacher, in anything."

"Gee, thanks for your vote of confidence," Methos dryly remarked, "And what, may I ask, have _you_ been doing to keep yourself occupied recently?"

"Cutting up corpses," Kronos told him.

"Old habits die hard, don't they?" Methos asked.

"You have a problem with coroners?"

"Not at all," Methos answered, "So long as they keep their hands and their sharp little instruments away from my carcass until I can get up and leave on my own accord."

Kronos laughed, "Too bad, I had plans for you in that autopsy room."

Methos knew that was just his brother's dark sense of humor at play, but still he couldn't help feeling the familiar icy chill of pins and needles in his back when he heard that.

* * *

Methos went looking for Silas and quickly realized he wasn't anywhere to be found in the house, so he went around the yard and found Silas in the back; and when Methos found him, he appeared to be digging a grave.

"Who's that for?" Methos asked.

Silas turned and looked at his brother, and grumbled something Methos couldn't understand and pointed over to the other side of the yard. Methos looked and quickly got his answer when he saw two large, dead raccoons with their skulls bashed in.

"Let me guess," he said, resisting the urge to vomit, "Mouth?"

"Who else?" Silas asked, though it was obvious he hadn't actually seen it happen, "You know if it had been Caspian, he would've eaten them."

"Maybe not," Methos replied as he nodded towards the seven crosses, "Why do we even bother coming back to this place?"

Silas thought about it for a minute before suggesting, "Maybe it's the sadist in _us_."

Methos laughed and said, "Must be…I'll say this for Caspian, he seems to have finally met his match in that woman. Who do you think will be the first one to kill the other?"

Silas shook his head and just said, "It wouldn't happen, those two are like the countries in nuclear war, both of those warheads would go off at the same time and kill each other in the explosion and everybody else in the process." He looked back to Methos who just seemed to be staring off into space, "Something troubling you, brother?"

That brought Methos back to reality. "No, just thinking…Silas, were you ever married?"

"A few times."

"Ever to an Immortal?" Methos asked.

Silas paused for a moment and thought back, finally shaking his head, "No."

"Me either. Would you?"

"I don't know," Silas said, "I never cared much for marriage. Why?"

"I was just thinking…you know I buried my last wife a few years back…and when I say last, I wish she was, I wish she truly were the last one…I've tried to convince myself that I'm too old to keep doing this, I know what's going to happen every time, and I still do it…I've tried to convince myself that I don't need it anymore, that I have no use for it anymore."

"For what?" Silas asked.

Methos paused for a second before saying, "I let myself fall head over heels for any woman that appeals to me, and in a few years I'm burying her and starting again…it'd be easier if I never fell in love with anyone again, it'd be easier if I never felt anything again."

"You forget you tried that once before," Silas reminded him, "It didn't work."

"I know, but I wish it would've," Methos said, "I don't need to bury anymore wives, but I can't live alone the rest of my life, I've tried that too and it also didn't work."

Silas buried the blade of the shovel in the ground and turned around to face his brother as he said, "Maybe that's why you keep coming back to this place and…" he stopped as they both heard a commotion from inside the house, first something breaking, and then people screaming, "Those people."

"It must be," Methos replied, "It's certainly not because of their great hospitality."

Methos waited until the noise died down in the house before he went in. He found Mouth in the kitchen cutting up potatoes and putting them in a boiling pan of water.

"What's going on in here?" he asked.

"Nothing, your brother and I were just having a little discussion," she answered.

"Why am I not surprised?" Methos said, "What about?"

"Nothing important," she said.

"Mouth," he said to her, "Is it true that you killed the seven dogs that are buried in the backyard?"

"Yeah, why?" she asked.

"Why?"

"I don't like dogs," she said, "I'm just no good with animals, or children, I hate them both. I _hate_ babies, they're always screaming their heads off, I can't stand the noise."

"And the dogs?"

"They never shut up," Mouth told him, "Day and night they'd bark all the time, they never stopped…I couldn't take it." She looked at him and hawed, "You're not one of those bleeding heart animal lovers are you?"

"Me? No," he said, "Silas however…" he didn't finish the thought, because it was just then that Kronos and Caspian entered the kitchen and the two seemed to be in a heated _discussion_ of their own.

They couldn't understand what the two brothers were saying to each other, but they both crowded in on Mouth at the table; Caspian stood with his back to her and his hand kept getting in the way of the potatoes she was cutting. Then Methos saw Mouth get a weird look in her eyes; she grabbed Caspian's hand and repositioned it on the table, he didn't notice because he was too engrossed at arguing with Kronos. Methos watched as she straightened out his fingers and then with the tips of her thumb and index finger, grabbed the tip of his pinky finger and raised the knife right over it, with the blade's tip down on the table, so when she brought the knife down it would chop his finger right off. Just for show, she raised the handle of the knife even higher just before slamming it down, but right before she did, Caspian pulled his hand away and she came down stabbing the table instead. Mouth let out a frustrate scream as she buried the tip of the knife clear through the cutting board instead. Kronos and Caspian turned and looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, and neither could understand what was the matter with her.

"Have you considered putting her on antidepressants?" Kronos asked him.

* * *

The summer passed uneventfully for the most part; the temperature reached highs of 120 on average and never dropped below 80 at night. Storms were a given; every week on the same night, they were met with high winds and pouring rain and hail stones ranging from marble sized to baseball size, denting the roof and sometimes busting the windows. On a few occasions, wall clouds formed and they watched and waited to see if anything would come out of the clouds, but nothing ever did. On the 4th of July it rained and Methos and Mouth resided on the front porch and tossed lit smoke bombs and firecrackers off the side and watched the explosions in midair and the colored bombs spinning around in the puddles as the water became stained with the colors of the smoke. Then at night they about burnt the whole house down when a large pack of bottle rockets was prematurely lit and came flying back at them.

"I still can't understand how or why you chose to marry my brother," he said to her one day as the two of them wandered around the land as everything became coated in the pink light of the sun setting that evening.

"Neither do I," she replied as she kicked at a rock, "I think it must've been one of those drunk night in Vegas things."

"But why do you stay?" Methos wanted to know.

"Why shouldn't I?" she asked as she turned around to face him, "I've stayed with your brother long enough, we've come to terms with what there is between us, and we've still agreed to stay together…maybe it's just too late in the game for either of us to try and live again."

"You really think that?" he asked her.

"Show me the idiot who said marriage is an institution, I'll show you somebody who never married," Mouth told him, "Marriage isn't an institution, it's an insane asylum."

"Tell me about it," Methos said, "I've done it 68 times."

"Ever to an Immortal?" she asked.

"No," he answered with a shake of his head.

"Why not?"

"Too much responsibility," was his explanation as he walked past her.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Mouth asked.

"I don't know," Methos confessed, "I've been saying that for so long, I don't even remember how or when I started using it."

"So what's the real reason why you never married an Immortal?" she inquired.

"I don't know," Methos said, "Maybe in my own sick twisted way I've gotten used to the idea of just being married for a few years and then starting again."

"Whereas if you're like your brother and I," Mouth told him, "Divorce is out…widowing is out, you're stuck together for life, however long that is."

"We should all be so lucky," Methos commented.

Mouth turned to look at him, "What's that mean?"

"Nothing," he said as he kept his head low, "Come on, let's get back to the house."

Mouth walked behind him and said, "You know, Methos, I have an idea you and I could get along a hell of a lot better if we could get away from those three idiots you call brothers."

"Maybe," Methos considered, and it sounded to Mouth like he planned to say more but instead he turned away and looked around at the land.

"What is it?" she asked as she came up behind him.

For a minute he just stood frozen, staring straight ahead, then he seemed to realize she was talking to him and he turned to her and said, "What? Oh, nothing, come on, they'll be looking for us soon."

Mouth snorted and replied, "That'll be the day."


	3. Chapter 3

One afternoon in September, Caspian and Mouth were in the kitchen having the same discussion that they'd been having for two months.

"Maybe it's just me," Mouth said, "But weren't your brothers supposed to be out of here halfway through the summer? And here we are almost in fall and still they're here, at this rate we'll be having them here until St. Patrick's Day!"

"And what's wrong with that?" Caspian wanted to know.

"They're weird!" she told him.

"They're _my_ family and I like having them here," he told her.

"You're the only one who does!" his wife remarked.

They were just about to the point of choking each other when they came to a sudden stop in their conversation when they felt another quickening approaching.

"Here comes another one of the house apes now," Mouth said.

"Oh shut up," Caspian told her.

The back door opened and Kronos came in wearing his white coat and swinging a medical bag, which he threw at the table and it just barely managed to land on the edge. "Calling me at work, this better be good."

"You're a coroner," Mouth said, "What's the hurry? Your customers aren't going anywhere."

"And if this keeps up I may be getting a new one," Kronos said as he wrapped his gloved hands around her neck, "One female, Caucasian, approximately 25 years old, cause of death, decapitation, murder weapon unknown."

"Get your hands off," she said as she pried them off her throat.

"Why was I called?" Kronos wanted to know as he practically got on top of Mouth and stood hovering over her.

Mouth got on her toes so she and he were of the same height and she gave the illusion of muscling in on him as she answered, "It's your brother."

"Which one?" Kronos asked, "I have three of them."

"It's Methos," Caspian answered.

"What about him?" Kronos asked.

"Your brother," Mouth repeated, "Came home a couple hours ago, didn't say a word to anybody, just stormed upstairs to his room, locked himself in and he hasn't stopped screaming since, and he won't come out."

It was obvious by the look on Kronos' face that this was not typical behavior for Methos. He peeled off his lab coat and gloves and headed up the stairs, wondering what the hell was going on. As he reached the head of the stairs to the second floor, he couldn't help but notice how unusually quiet the house was. As quiet as the proverbial tomb, definitely quieter than the morgue, he knew that from personal experience. He headed down the hallway until he came to the door to Methos' room, and even here all was quiet, not at all like Mouth had said.

He listened at the door, he didn't hear anything. He knew Methos was in there because he could feel the quickening, but he couldn't even hear his brother breathing in the next room. He rapped on the door and called out, "Methos?" Still nothing. He beat on the door again and made it clear he wasn't going away and told Methos to open the door. Suddenly he heard movement from within the bedroom, he heard Methos come to the door and he heard the bolt and the latch being undone, but then Methos moved away from the door without opening it.

Kronos let himself in the room and the first thing he saw was that his brother had just about succeeded in trashing the whole place; most of the furniture was turned over, broken, or heavily splintered from where he'd beaten and kicked it, everything was knocked off from the dresser and the table and thrown all over the room, the curtains were torn halfway down, the mirror over the dresser was cracked and cast a thousand identical, miniscule reflections, holes had been pounded into the walls, and there was blood staining parts of the wall and the floor. Clearly, whatever Methos had been going through, even pain hadn't been a deterrent for his behavior.

Methos stood over by the window, looking out the window, his back to Kronos, his head slumped down, he clutched his left hand to his right wrist, refusing to move, refusing to turn around. Kronos wasn't sure to make of what he was seeing; it had been centuries since he'd ever seen Methos act like this and the last time it was because his 30th wife had died. He walked over to the other side of the room and went up to Methos, expecting at any moment for his brother to turn and lash at him like a wild animal, but Methos stayed where he stood and didn't move a muscle.

"What's the matter, brother?"

Now he could see Methos; his eyes were blank and looked dead, and it was obvious that he'd been crying for quite some time. He hardly resembled the man Kronos had seen only that morning, and Kronos couldn't figure out what could have happened in only a few hours to so drastically change his brother. He reached his hand out but Methos immediately stepped as far away from Kronos as was possible.

"What's wrong, Methos?"

Methos closed his eyes and shook his head, "I'm not going to tell you."

Kronos almost laughed, "Why not?"

Methos took another step away from him and turned to glare back at his brother with accusing eyes and he said, "I'm not telling you, you'll just laugh at me."

Kronos was starting to worry that Methos had lost his mind. Clearly anything that could draw out this much damage from his brother was nothing to laugh at.

"I won't," he told his brother.

"Oh yes you will," Methos replied, "I just know it."

"Methos." What the hell was he supposed to do to prove to Methos that he was being serious? "I swear, I won't laugh."

"Yes you will," Methos said, "Because it's ridiculous, the whole thing is stupid, I don't even know why I'm allowing myself to get so upset about it."

"About what?" Kronos asked, "Just tell me."

Methos backed away again and shook his head, but Kronos could tell he didn't have much resistance left in him.

"What's happened?" he asked again.

Finally, Methos gave up and decided to tell him, but still he wouldn't let Kronos anywhere near him; he backed over to the other side of the room and Kronos could tell Methos was just waiting for the slightest movement on his part to take off again, so he stayed where he was and waited for his brother to explain.

"This morning I was teaching a class," Methos started, "And I'm drawing up this equation on the blackboard, nothing mind blowing, any idiot who's been paying attention would be able to get it…I reach the end of the problem, and I turn around to ask if anybody among the 40 seniors knows the answer…and when I turn around…I'm looking at a roomful of people who I have no recollection of ever seeing before, and they're all looking at me, and I can't figure out why. I don't know where I am, I don't know _why_ I'm there…and I turn back around, hoping to God that I'll figure out why I'm there and what it is I'm doing there…and I see this problem drawn out on the board, and for the life of me I can't figure out what the hell it is…I didn't know anything, I couldn't _think_ of anything, my entire mind had become a blank…in that instant I didn't have any idea what year it was, what name I was going by, I couldn't think of anything, do you have any idea how terrifying that is? I left the room and started wandering around the university, trying to make some sense out of what was going on, about ten minutes later it finally comes back and hits me, but by then I couldn't stand being there anymore, so I just…"

"Left," Kronos finished for him.

"I was practically crawling out of my skin on the way home, I couldn't get back here fast enough, and once I was…"

"Yes," Kronos didn't need to hear the rest, he could see for himself just by looking around the room, "I think I get the point."

Methos started grumbling something to himself incoherently and started hitting himself on the sides of his head. Kronos crossed over to the other side of the room and grabbed Methos' wrists to restrain him. "Don't do that."

"Kronos, I'm worried," Methos said, "What if I'm finally starting to lose my mind?"

"Why? Because you have one memory lapse?" Kronos asked, "Methos, it happens to all of us, you live as long as we do and it gets confusing after a while, there's nothing wrong with it."

"You don't understand, Kronos," Methos told him, "This isn't the first time it's happened…this is just one of the first times it's gotten this bad…"

Methos then told Kronos that for the past few months, it had been coming about several times a day that he would forget where he was, what he was doing, at times even what year it was or who he was or was supposed to be. Things were starting to make sense to Kronos because in the past few months, he and the others had often caught Methos staring off into space and not hearing the people around him…he had attributed it to Methos just trying to forget who he was with or maybe he was just thinking too much into something, but now it made sense. But it still didn't make sense that Methos should let himself get so upset over it.

"Don't tell the others," Methos said, almost pleading with him, "I don't want them to know I'm losing my mind."

"Methos, you are not losing anything," Kronos told him, "You're just upset."

Methos fell against him and started crying again. Kronos held onto him for a minute and patted his back sympathetically and tried to get him to calm down.

"I'm worried, Kronos," Methos confessed, "It scares me to death to think about it, but I think my memory's finally eroded."

"That's not true and you know it."

"I don't know anything anymore," Methos replied, "I don't _remember_ anything anymore! I'm starting to think that maybe _nobody_ was ever meant to live 5,000 years, not even Immortals. My whole life I've done whatever it took to stay alive because I didn't want to die…but if this is what my life's going to become now, I can't see any point in surviving much longer."

That last statement worried Kronos, though he wouldn't admit it. He helped Methos over to the bed, the only piece of furniture in the whole room he hadn't destroyed.

"I think you need to lie down for a while, you look like you haven't slept for a week," he told Methos as he pushed him down on the mattress, "And you're starting to sound like it too."

"Kronos," Methos reached out and grabbed his arm to make sure he had his attention, "Don't tell the others, please."

"I won't tell them anything, I swear," he assured his brother.

Methos nodded weakly and laid back against the pillows, and in a short time was in a dead sleep. Kronos started picking up everything that had been smashed and tossed out everything that was beyond recognition and put a few things back that were salvageable. When he was done, he left the room, closed the door behind him and headed back down to the kitchen where Caspian and his wife were waiting to find out what was the matter.

"Well?" was the first thing Mouth said when he came down.

"Well what?" Kronos asked.

"What the hell is wrong with that guy?" she wanted to know.

"Nothing's wrong with him."

"What?" the other two asked.

"Can't a person have a bad day anymore?" Kronos walked over to Mouth and backed her against the wall, "And if I hear so much as one more word out of _any_one, I'm going to throw them through the window."

"Sheesh," Mouth said as she inched away from Kronos and over to Caspian, "It must be catchy, whatever it is."

Caspian only nodded in response.

* * *

The day passed and Methos didn't come out of his room and he wouldn't see anyone or speak to them. When night fell and he still hadn't resurfaced, Caspian was starting to get suspicious, "Nothing's wrong with him, huh?"

"Nothing serious anyway," Kronos replied.

"I don't know much about your brother but as long as he's been here, I've never seen him do this," Mouth said.

"Well you're right in that you don't know much about him," Kronos said, "I do, and I know that there's nothing the matter with him that won't pass."

"I hope you're right, Kronos," Caspian said, "The four of us have been together for too long for something to happen to him now."

While the brothers argued, Mouth sneaked off and went upstairs to see Methos for herself. She came to his door and listened for a moment and didn't hear anything. She knocked on the door and heard him call out, "Who is it?"

"Who else is going to knock in this house?" Mouth asked as she stepped in.

"Well you normally don't either," he replied.

The lights were out and she couldn't see him, could only see his outline from where he sat on the bed.

"So what's the matter with you?" she asked him.

"Kronos didn't tell you?"

"He doesn't think you have a problem," Mouth said.

"I know…but I do, but I don't want the others to know about it," he told her.

"Why not?"

"Because it's embarrassing," Methos said.

"Aren't all problems?" she asked, "That's why nobody ever talks about them."

"I don't think they'd understand," he said.

"Maybe I would," she suggested.

He laughed darkly and said, "I doubt that."

"Unless it's a male thing, try me," she told him.

He felt stupid for doing so, but he relayed the whole story for her as he had told Kronos earlier. And when he finished, he waited for her snide remarks, for her to make a joke at his expense, since he knew that was her nature, but none came.

"I've had days like that, I know what it's like," she said, "I think my thing though, is that I'm still young enough that this whole Immortality thing doesn't seem real, like it's a dream."

"Well what's my excuse?" Methos asked.

"I don't know," she replied, "I don't think you're crazy, Methos, but I do think it's more serious than Kronos is willing to believe."

"That's my real problem," Methos said, "The man I trust more than anyone else in the world, the man I love more than anyone else, I need him to believe me and he doesn't."

"I know," she told him, "That's the price we pay for getting involved with them."

* * *

Over the next few days, Methos fell into a deep depression and he hardly left his room, wouldn't see anyone and though Silas brought him up his meals, he wouldn't eat them. His brothers tried to act as though they hadn't noticed, and that it didn't bother them as deeply as it did, but everybody could tell they were all thinking the same thing, even if they didn't say it.

And then one day, Methos seemed to be back to normal; he came out and spoke with everyone and seemed to be content with his life again, as if nothing had happened. He didn't say anything about his previous behavior and it led the others to wonder if he just wanted to put it behind him, or if he seriously didn't remember it.

Fall started to turn to winter. Before long, the first snow of the year had arrived, and things at the house started to become slightly more festive.

One day Methos saw Mouth carrying down a large box from the attic and he inquired what it was.

"They're Christmas decorations that my relatives had smuggled out of Germany during the war," she answered, "Just because I'm married to your brother doesn't mean I'm not entitled to have a little beauty in my life, God knows I'm surrounded by ugly all day long."

"Ha ha ha," Caspian dryly remarked as he entered the room, "Talk about the big _fat_ pot calling the kettle black."

"Oh yeah?" Mouth picked up the box, hoisted it over her head and aimed to hit him with it, "I'm going to…"

Methos found himself in between them, somehow being the voice of reasoning between two psychos.

"Now wait a minute, Mouth," he told her, "You just said yourself that your relatives had to smuggle those out of Germany during the war. They're 50 years old, they're irreplaceable, you'd hate yourself if they broke just to hit him."

"That's right," she said as she put the box down, "Well here's something expendable for him."

"What?" Caspian asked.

Mouth pushed past Methos and kicked Caspian in the crotch, who fell on his knees and she used that opportunity to jump on him. Methos grabbed her and tried to pull her off of Caspian but instead he got dragged down in the fight between them. He was sure to any outsider they'd look like a fight from a cartoon; one big massive cyclone with arms and legs. He wasn't sure who was hitting him but as they rolled around he said to whoever was nearest him, "I don't want to play with you anymore."

Kronos and Silas came up and pulled them off each other one by one; Silas pulled Caspian back and Kronos pinned Mouth's arms and lifted her in the air.

"What happened?" Kronos wanted to know as he watched Methos peel himself off the floor.

"I honestly have no idea," Methos replied.

* * *

As the next few days passed, the temperature would jump and sink and the snow would melt and drop again and melt again; and during that time Methos amused himself watching as Mouth tried to get the house in some kind of order for Christmas. One day she had decided to decorate the living room and enlisted Silas' help of sitting on his shoulders so she could reach the chandelier. Methos stood alongside Kronos who also watched with some amusement, and Methos would've sworn he had seen this movie somewhere before and if acting on a cue he said to her, over his muffled laughter, "Watch what you hang on that chandelier, it's not strong."

"It's only tinsel," she said as she held up the icicles.

"It's too much," he warned her.

She blew him off. "What harm can one more piece do?"

"Uh-oh," he said quietly to himself, and trying to contain his laughter, he grabbed Kronos by the arm and pulled him into the kitchen.

"What is it?" Kronos asked.

"I've seen this one before," he answered.

"Seen what before?" Kronos asked.

Methos raised a finger for him to be quiet and they both listened and they heard the noise of the chandelier falling from the ceiling, and landing on somebody, followed by a loud yell that they recognized as being Caspian's. Both men looked at each other and laughed though it was killing them not to see what they knew had happened.

"You see," Kronos said, "I told you there was a reason we decided to stay here."

"Yes, the cheap humor," Methos replied, "It's certainly not for the good company."


	4. Chapter 4

Methos spent the next several nights with Mouth as his guest for the evening. They would stay up and play cards or watch the late night movies on TV, or while he was in bed, she would sit at the foot board and they would talk and discuss their lives and the things they had experienced and the people they had met. Methos found it a relief to have someone to talk to who wasn't one of his brothers, with someone from another lifetime, thousands of years his junior, old discussions could once again become new.

One night when they were sitting in bed opposite each other, Mouth surprised him by suddenly asking, "Do you believe in God?"

He thought about it for a minute before answering, "Sometimes."

"What does that mean?" she asked, "Sometimes, how does that work? One century you do and the next you don't?"

"Well, do you?" Methos asked.

"I have to," she said, "Nothing in this world makes sense, _we_ don't make any sense, God is the only thing that does…who was it that said if God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent Him?"

"Do you ever think about dying?" Methos asked, "Permanently that is?"

"Sure," she said, "I don't keep a gun around for the hell of it."

"No, do you actually think about what happens at the point you die?" Methos asked.

"I try not to," she answered, "Somehow I don't think Heaven is for us, you know? Seems like no matter what we do, what we try to do, we're damned, we have to be."

"You really believe that?" Methos somberly asked.

"Isn't that what you used to think?" she asked, "Thousands of years ago, didn't you guys think you were cursed to still live no matter what happened to you?"

"Maybe," he said.

"Maybe," she repeated, mocking him, "You don't have a definite answer for anything, do you?"

"Not anymore I don't think," he said.

Mouth got up from the bed and went over to the bookcase that he had crammed full, "You seem to have put your roots down pretty deep around here, I don't think we're ever going to get rid of you bastards."

"Would you want to?" he asked with a little smirk.

Mouth didn't answer and just glanced over the books on the middle shelf and pulled out one that particularly caught her eye. She took it over to the bed and held it for Methos to see, "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum, this yours?"

Methos didn't answer so Mouth flipped open the hard cover and saw written on the first yellowed page, "To Alexia and Adam, your loving father. Xmas, 1938." She looked at Methos and asked him, "Who're they?"

Methos didn't look at her as he answered nonchalantly, "My children."

"You had children?" she asked.

"Well," he sat up, "The only way we can…I was married," he took the book from her, "I never told the others, but I was married in 1929 to a woman…" he smiled sadly as he recalled, "If you want to get technical, they weren't _hers_ either."

"Whose were they, then?" Mouth asked.

Methos shrugged, "She adopted them from Berlin. A pair of twins…they came over in 1930, it didn't take long for them to learn English, and it didn't take much longer for them to lose their accents. _Them_ I still remember."

"So what happened?" she asked.

His attention seemed to be drawn to the wall beside the bed, as if he were seeing it all over again. "They were 12 that year…very smart children…and very serious."

"Does that come from growing up in Germany?" Mouth asked.

"I don't know," Methos said, "Anyway…it was Christmas Eve, she was still working…she took a job as a night watchman…she always came home late so the nights it was me and the kids…"

* * *

From the time Alexia and Adam had gotten off the plane from Germany, they could never stand to be apart from each other. And even now tonight they had fallen asleep back to back in the middle of the couch, their legs sprawled over the sofa's arms. Methos smiled to himself as he switched off the radio that had put out its yearly broadcast of A Christmas Carol. He had taken the twins to see the film version a few nights ago, and they found it mildly amusing but were not impressed by it. They weren't impressed by much, he had quickly found out.

The clock on the wall said 9:30, and Lorraine wasn't home yet, and he knew she wouldn't be home until about midnight. Outside everything was white with snow and ice, and the temperature was probably 10 degrees; inside the house was warm and he considered the kids to be smart enough to fall asleep in the house's second most heated area, the living room right across from the blazing fire.

Methos couldn't help but wonder what had happened to these children before they came to America; he had remarked jokingly in the beginning that somebody had found a way to duplicate children and replace them with automatons or something. In all the years they'd had these two kids, they were usually very quiet, very somber, and very rarely caused any trouble; or as Methos had explained it to Lorraine, nowhere near how perfectly normal children misbehaved. They'd both gone out of their ways to make the children's new home a comfortable one, a place where they felt secured, a place where they knew they belonged and were loved. They went all out to give these two a good life, and yet there was still something that seemed wrong, that no matter what happened, these two gave off the impression that they could never fully trust anybody other than themselves.

Methos took a couple of wrapped packages that he'd hidden away where the kids couldn't find them before Christmas, and went over to the couch and nudged them to wake them up.

"Alright you two, move over," he told them as he sat down between them and handed them each a package.

The first year they'd had the twins they found out the hard way that it was useless to try giving them two of the same thing. The two lived as one and so only accepted one of everything where their toys and books and games were concerned and they would break any copies they received. He handed one present to each child and watched as they ripped off the paper and twine.

Adam opened the cover of the book in his hand and saw the title and some of the illustrations inside, and Alexia examined the two wooden puzzle mazes she held in her hands.

Methos met with his son's perplexed gaze first and tapped the book with his index finger as he explained, "I know you two have read all the Oz books, thought you might like this one next." And then he craned his neck to see his daughter and told her, "And I know you two like your puzzles and I hear these two are _very_ difficult so that should keep you busy for a few minutes."

The two exchanged their gifts to get a better look at what they got and after a minute of looking them over, they surprised Methos by lunging at him and wrapping their arms around his neck.

"You're welcome," he choked out as he pulled them off of them.

They had decided to wait up for their mother, and the twins wiled away the time alternating between stuffing themselves on candy canes and the contents from the fruit basket, and reading their new book. Methos watched the clock and when 11:30 had arrived and Lorraine still wasn't home, and that the children were on the verge of falling asleep again, he decided enough was enough for one night. He grabbed them each by the hand and pulled them up and told them, "Come on you two, it's time to go to bed."

They grumbled in protest as they got up from the couch, but Methos was persistent as he told them, "When your mother gets home we'll wake you up so you can see her. Besides, it's a known fact that Christmas Eve can't cross over into Christmas at the stroke of midnight unless _all_ good little children are in bed asleep when the clock strikes, _and_ the same goes for the _bad _little children as well."

He got them upstairs, changed for bed, and got them tucked in, he noted, "Nice and _tight_ so you can't escape", put their book in with them, and two more candy canes incase they got hungry in the night, and made sure they were both asleep before he went back downstairs and resumed waiting for his wife to get home.

* * *

"So what happened?" Mouth asked, "She finally came home, didn't she?"

"Of course she did," Methos answered, "Finally…and it was a nice night and we had a nice Christmas together, nothing went wrong, it was almost boring."

"So what happened?" she wanted to know.

"In 1939 I walked into the middle of a bank robbery and I was shot, died publicly…my wife was there and saw me die. I knew I could never explain it to them, so I hid out until the funeral was over and then I left. The coffin was weighted down with rocks and nobody was the wiser. I left town, I couldn't take a chance on someone recognizing me…and also, I figured the further away I was from them, the better…I never wanted to know what happened to them after that."

"So you don't even know if they're still alive?" Mouth asked.

He shook his head, "I'm sure the twins are…they wouldn't be very old yet."

"Do I even want to know if they're still alive _how_ then you got their book?" she asked as she held it up.

"Probably not," Methos answered.

"And your wife? Is she still alive?"

"I don't know."

Mouth threw herself on the other side of the bed beside him and said only, "I'm sorry."

"I never told the others about it," Methos said.

"Why not?"

"I keep saying I should learn by now not to get attached to people…and if Kronos knew how many times I've _really_ been married, he'd agree, I'm sure of it."

"But you don't really believe it, do you?" Mouth asked.

"I'm tired of burying everyone I get involved with," Methos said.

"So?" Mouth said, "Try someone like yourself, they're harder to kill."

He scoffed, "Don't suppose you could recommend someone."

"Well…" she said with a knowing smirk.

Methos snorted and said, "When it was the four of us in the Bronze Age, the code was 'we share everything', but there was another one we had, 'you so much as look at my wife and I'll rip your arm off and beat you to death with it'."

"Well surely you know that that thing down the hall that you call brother," she told him, "Couldn't care less. Ours is a very open marriage."

That surprised Methos. "It is?"

"I imagine it'd be a lot more open if we could actually bother finding anybody to have affairs with," she added.

In spite of himself and how miserable he was feeling that night, he couldn't help laughing at that statement.

Later in the night, Kronos, half asleep, walked past the open bedroom door and caught sight of something as he passed by, and he doubled around to confirm what he saw. Methos and Mouth were in bed asleep, respectively each on their own side, each curled on their side like a couple of bookends. He didn't say a word, just quietly went over to the bed and pulled up the covers, which had been bunched up at the foot of the bed and draped them over the two people who paid no attention and never woke up. He noticed that Mouth had an old book in the crook of her arm but he couldn't see what it was and decided it would be like prying a gun out of someone's cold dead hands, and he had plenty of experience to know just how damn hard that could be.

* * *

"Since you three have been freeloading around here for almost a year," Mouth said to Methos the next day, "It wouldn't seem you've had many complaints with the food so far, now for Christmas I'm going with an old family tradition."

"Which is what?" Methos asked.

"The general idea was just to have enough food cooked to last from Christmas until the damn groundhog sticks his neck out to see his shadow," she explained, "And the way it's all cooked requires a few days for everything to fully get done. First there'll be the turkey…though there are three more of you, so better make it two…on second thought, better make it four."

"Why four?" Methos asked.

Mouth pointed over to Silas as he came in and answered, "He looks like he could eat a couple of them himself."

"Look who's talking," they heard Caspian say as he also entered the kitchen, "If that isn't the big _fat_ pot calling the kettle black."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" Mouth wanted to know.

"Only this, during the war I hauled plenty of hogs in for the meals," Caspian gestured with his hands to emphasize the size of them and Methos had it figured as the size of a medium sized adult, "And they weren't _near_ as heavy as you."

"Oh yeah?" she replied, "Well I used to haul flour for the bakery, in hundred pound bags, and they weren't much lighter than you."

Methos sat back and watched the two get closer to each other until they were close enough to kill. Silas came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention, and gesturing to their brother and his wife, he asked Methos, "And you miss this?"

Methos laughed and said for an answer, "Sadist in me."

* * *

The next day Methos stayed home with his sister-in-law when his three brothers went out for various reasons, and he sat in the living room and watched as she continued to decorate as she sang, or attempted to sing, "Holly leaves are sharp like stingers, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la, handle them with dainty fingers, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la." She turned her head and said to Methos, "You okay? You've been awfully quiet this morning."

"I was just thinking," he said.

"Oh, what about?"

"Death."

"Boy aren't _you_ the cheery one?" she said.

"Tell me something, Mouth," Methos said.

"Yes?"

"Do you ever have…out of body experiences?"

"What?" she laughed, "What, like being up on the ceiling and seeing yourself on the floor?"

"Well…something like that," he said.

"I don't think so, why?"

"Never mind," he responded, "It's ridiculous."

"You sure are a weird one," Mouth said, "And Caspian always used to speak so highly of you."

Methos looked up at her, "He did?"

She nodded.

"Now I _am_ depressed," he said, to which Mouth only chuckled in response.

* * *

As the days passed, Methos wound up with the unfortunate job of guinea pig, testing everything Mouth cooked.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked as he took a bite of something.

He chewed in an exaggerated manner and conked on his head a few times also.

"Well," he said once he was able to swallow, "It's completely tasteless, heavy and is like chewing on cardboard."

"It's a fruitcake!" she told him.

"Oh, well then it's perfect," he told her.

Mouth glared at him.

"So what's next on the menu?" he asked.

"I start cooking the turkeys, family recipe, it'll take three days, should be done just in time for Christmas."

"What about that big ham?" Methos asked.

"I tried, I can't shove Caspian into the oven," she told him.

"You two can't get along to save your lives, can you?" he asked.

"We haven't so far," she said.

"I seem to recall during World War I there was a Christmas truce met between the two sides."

"I remember," she said, "The Tommies and the Jerries, everybody knows about that."

"That's a bit before your time, isn't it?" Methos asked.

"I still remember, so what?"

"So if it was possible for the French and the Germans, I should like to think it would be possible for my brother and my sister-in-law to do the same. I've been here for over six months…"

"So noted!"

"And during that time," he continued, "I haven't seen you two act civil towards one another for _one_ day. Now, you're both adults, do you think you could force yourselves to be tolerable for 24 hours?"

"Well…" she seemed to consider it.

"Would you do it for me?" he suggested.

She looked at him and said, "For you…that's different, I suppose."

* * *

"I don't get it," Mouth told her husband later when he got home, "The guy starts babbling on about out-of-body experiences and then not a word, it doesn't make any sense."

"Where is he now?" Caspian asked.

"Up in his room," she said, "Where else? That's where he always is anymore, like a moody child."

"I'll try talking to him," he said, "I'm his brother."

"And that's supposed to mean something?" she asked, "You think you have some kind of hold over him that the rest of the world lacks?"

They heard a door upstairs open and Caspian gestured for her to shut up. They got back and saw Methos come down the stairs, and without even noticing them, he went straight for the front door and left.

"What was that about?" she asked.

They ran out after him and saw he was already down on the next street. Within five minutes he was down in the middle of the business district of the city; he walked quickly and seemed not to notice anything about his surroundings except that he wasn't at his ideal destination yet.

"Where the hell is he going?" Mouth asked as they followed after him.

He didn't know but he had an idea whatever was going on, it wasn't good. Caspian couldn't help but notice how right at this moment his brother seemed to be acting of something other than his own accord, as if somebody else were directing him to wherever he was headed. After 15 minutes they came down to the river and they watched in disbelief as they saw Methos walk straight out onto the dock and then take a step off the river and fall in.

"He's out of his mind!" Mouth said as they ran down behind him.

They got on the edge of the dock just as Methos shot up in the icy cold water, his breath visible in large clouds as he started sputtering and struggling to get out. Caspian grabbed his icy cold wrist and pulled him up and back onto the dock.

"What the hell was that about?" he wanted to know, "What were you doing?"

But Methos didn't seem to know.

"Oh my God," Mouth grumbled as she ran her hand over her eyes and up over her head, "It's Manchurian Candidate all over again…tell me Methos, you didn't happen to pass your time playing solitaire before you decided to go swimming, did you?"

"I…" he tried to answer but it was obvious he just couldn't because he honestly didn't know why he had done what he did.

Caspian got him out of his soaking wet trench coat which by now was heavy enough to weigh a person down and probably drown them in the water.

"Take your clothes off," Mouth told him as she untied her trench coat.

"Are you crazy?" Methos asked, "You know how far we are from the house? That would be _quite_ a sight."

"Put this on," she said as she tossed her coat to him, "You're freezing."

By the time they got back to the house, Methos shook and convulsed like someone who overdosed on drugs; Caspian took him upstairs to help him get warmed up while Mouth dropped his wet clothes into the laundry. She never went upstairs but stayed at the foot of the stairwell and tried to listen in on anything going on at the time, there was nothing. After an hour had passed she went up the stairs and looked into his bedroom; he seemed to be asleep and she noted he had been wrapped up in the bedcovers so tightly it looked like a cocoon.

"What the hell is wrong with him?" she asked Caspian later. But he couldn't answer.

The Immortal husband and wife had argued for a while before Kronos and Silas returned home, and the two decided it wouldn't do any good to tell the others what had happened; especially since Kronos hadn't proven to be of any help the last time, and they decided to keep Methos' last little episode to themselves, and with that they went their separate ways.

* * *

Mouth stayed as far away from her husband and her brothers-in-law as was possible that night. Every couple hours she checked on the food in the kitchen but otherwise she stayed in her bedroom with her ear to the wall, straining to listen for anything that might come from Methos' room. She had considered going in to see him but wasn't convinced that it would do any good; she didn't know what was wrong with him but she knew even for Immortals it wasn't normal.

She didn't remember falling asleep but she must've because the next thing she knew was being jerked awake by a noise. Throwing open the door she went down the hall to Methos' room and barged in and was met with a sickening sight. She ran downstairs to where Kronos, Silas and Caspian were all seated in the living room and she told them, "Methos is gone! He jumped out the window and took off."

"What?" the others were shocked by this revelation.

"And I checked," she told her husband, "His sword is gone."

"Come on, we have to find him before something happens," Kronos told the others.


	5. Chapter 5

Methos had gotten enough of a head start on the others that when they left the house in search of him, they couldn't tell where he had gone. But it hadn't taken long for Kronos to pick up on the rapidly descending quickening and he led the way as the others followed him.

It had snowed a little during the night just so that everything was covered lightly in white. The moon was out and lit the way as they followed after their brother, who was so far ahead of the others that he couldn't hear them as they called him, or feel their quickenings. He traipsed through the backwoods beyond the house, in the same robotic way that he had earlier that day when he went to the river, and he started heading up a steep hill and was near the top by the time his brothers had just reached the bottom of it.

"I'm convinced your brother really _has_ lost his mind," Mouth told Caspian.

"Shut up," he told her.

She opened her mouth to respond but realized he hadn't said it just to be annoying, they all listened and they all felt sickened as they made out the all too familiar sound of metal blades clashing.

"It's a challenge," Mouth realized.

"With who?" that was the question.

They hurried up the hill and were just in time to see two evenly sized figures circling around one another, their swords clanging with every move made. Before anybody could step forward to assist or to sabotage the fight, one figure pulled the other into a fatal move, chopped off his head, and then the remaining figure fell over the side of the cliff just as the quickening began. It had been too dark to see who had won and who had lost, but suddenly they all felt a wave of panic wash over them at the possibility. Kronos was the first to run to the corpse but Mouth was right behind him and she grabbed him and pulled him back and both fell to the ground. Silas and Caspian ran ahead of them to see it for themselves, while Kronos rolled around on the cold ground with Mouth.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" he asked as he throttled her.

"You know what happened!" she screamed at him.

Kronos broke away from her and then froze as he saw Silas and Caspian standing over the body, they both looked sickened by what they saw, and Kronos' stomach dropped as he knew it could only mean one thing. But he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge what it was.

Mouth likewise was in shock and a form of denial but it didn't last long, she hit herself on the sides of her head and said repeatedly, "No!" like a mantra.

Kronos tried to move but he felt frozen, he felt as if his mind had shut down and he couldn't even think now. Then he became aware of somebody near him and realized it was Mouth; and though he had an undying feeling that he had to see it for himself, another thought occurred to him that even if he did need to see, his brother's wife did _not_. He never said anything but he knew what she had meant to Methos, and it had been mutual that she had needed him just as much; though neither would have ever said anything about it. He took a step back, feeling genuinely surprised that he was even able to move, and he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the scene and took her back to the house. It about killed him to leave, but he knew that his brothers would see to the matter at hand just as well without him.

* * *

Back at the house, Mouth couldn't stay still, she felt sick, she moaned and mumbled and acted like a person sick in delirium. She went around the room in circles and at one point started hitting the walls; by the time Caspian and Silas had come back, she couldn't even stand being in the same room with them. She ran upstairs to the master bedroom, _her_ bedroom, collapsed on the bed and for the first time in as long as she remembered, cried until she fell asleep.

She had no memory of actually falling asleep but knew that at some point during the night she must've because the next thing she knew, awakening out of a falling dream, she saw the room was bright with sun and she was shocked to see Caspian in the bed beside her, he was already getting up. The two of them hadn't willingly spent a night in the same bed together in months, so it said plenty about the drained state both were left in by the events of last night.

Methos was dead, there was no way to step around that fact. He had sneaked out of the house last night for reasons unknown, met with an opponent, and lost. How, was the question, how could he lose? He had survived 5,000 years and proven time and again to be a worthy opponent and one who rarely lost, and now he had lost his head, and it baffled everyone. Everybody was in a state of shock; when they all met in the kitchen that morning, nobody could speak at first, they all just walked around each other.

Finally, Silas was the one to break the silence, asking the question that everyone probably wondered, but nobody else would dare give voice to.

"What are we going to do with…the body?"

At those words Mouth wanted to crawl under a rock and die herself, but somehow she remained composed as she forced herself to answer, "A funeral." The others looked at her and she cleared her throat as she continued, "We give him a funeral. A public funeral. That way everybody who knew him will know he's dead, they won't look for him anymore."

Nobody spoke for a moment and the three remaining brothers looked to one another as if they were considering it. The silence was almost as maddening as any words, and Mouth was ready to rip somebody's throat out. She paced around and came upon them again as she exploded, "Is everybody deaf around here? Didn't you hear what I said? Give him a funeral, bury him with some dignity, but let the world know that he's gone. It's the least we can do for him. All his life he had to hide, now he won't. Isn't that what people say? When you're dead your problems are over? Well his sure as hell are!"

They remained silent for another minute as they considered it before they finally agreed. They quickly made the arrangements and decided he would be buried first thing tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning, Mouth looked to the calendar and confirmed what she already knew: Christmas Eve.

Silas and Caspian tended to the body as Mouth made a call to the local newspaper for the obituary and funeral announcement. It was short notice and probably not all who knew Methos as either himself or his Watcher alias would attend, but the word would quickly get out and everybody would know what had happened. That afternoon, Caspian and his wife sat in the kitchen and didn't speak to each other, for once it was not out of malice towards one another, but for the simple shock of the loss.

"You didn't find the guy responsible, did you?" she finally asked.

Caspian slowly shook his head, "We covered every square inch of the surrounding area, we never found anyone."

"I wonder who could've done it," she said, "I wonder who could finally be able to defeat the great Methos."

"Stop with the jokes, I'm not in the mood," he warned her.

"All of life is a joke," she replied, "A sick one."

* * *

The next morning the brothers got ready for the funeral but were slightly taken aback when they realized they were going alone; Mouth, for whatever reason, couldn't bring herself to go to the cemetery with the others, but they suspected she would be along eventually.

For as short of notice as the world had of Adam Pierson's untimely death, it had been time enough for what seemed like half the town's population to come out for the burial. To the world of Watchers, this was yet another tragedy they had to endure with losing one of their own; but to the Immortals who attended the funeral, it meant something far worse because they were the only ones who knew that the man in the grave was Methos, the world's oldest Immortal. Caspian and Silas stayed close to the grave throughout the service but Kronos had distanced himself from the others, over to the far end of the cemetery, away from everyone else. They had noticed that he seemed to still have some difficulty accepting the fact that Methos was dead.

It was cold that day and everybody about froze to death as they stood in the falling snow to watch the burial. December 24th, a hell of a day to have a funeral for someone. The service had started early, around 10 o' clock, it was now nearing 11 and Silas and Caspian felt another Immortal approaching and turning to the entrance gates, saw it was only Mouth, dressed appropriately for the occasion in a black coat, black shirt, black jeans and black boots and she shielded her eyes from the public with black sunglasses. She made her way over to her husband and brother-in-law and said, "I'm sorry I'm late."

"Well it wouldn't be the worst thing you ever did," Caspian remarked.

Mouth looked over towards Kronos who stood alone, leaning against a big tree and she leaned towards her husband and asked, "How's he holding up?"

"Better than we thought," Caspian said, "But I wouldn't count on it lasting."

Kronos stayed at the cemetery long after everybody else had departed, finally, alone, he was able to go over to the tombstone that marked his brother's grave. Being this close to it now, he started to lose it. How had this happened? What had gone wrong? He remembered back to when Methos first confided in him that he feared he was going crazy, and Kronos had shrugged it off; but had Methos been right? Had that been the reason why he lost his head in a fight after so many centuries of surviving? Finally he couldn't take it anymore; he screamed and pounded his fists against the granite once before he fell down alongside the stone and stayed there for what must have been hours.

It was night when the others came back to the cemetery for him. He felt somebody grabbing him but he was too exhausted to care. Caspian and Mouth helped him up and walked him over to the car at the entrance gate and they put him in the back with Caspian and Mouth got in the front with Silas and they went home, despite how haunting the house would be now without Methos there.

When the four of them got home, they said nothing to each other and all went their own ways for the night: Kronos locked himself in his room and fell down on the bed, completely worn out and wanting nothing more than to forget what had happened. Silas went to his own room and sat down in an old rocking chair by the door and tried to think. He tried to make sense of what had happened over the past few days, and he did it with a feeling of regret.

He had never been particularly sentimental to the holidays but a couple of days ago something had happened that he took as too much coincidence to just be coincidence. He had a reputation among the four of them as being the fondest of animals but Methos thoroughly enjoyed their company as well; and Silas recalled he especially had a fondness towards cats, both domestic and wildlife sized. That day when he had been out he had come across a small cat that couldn't have been more than a few months old, and seeing that it was a stray, he decided it would be perfect company for his brother. He had taken the cat home and done a good job of keeping it hidden from Methos and had planned to give it to him the next day.

And Caspian and Mouth had, with a haunting feeling, gone to their own room and without bothering to undress or turn out the lights, crawled into bed and collapsed against the pillows.

"Hell of a way to spend Christmas," Mouth said quietly. Caspian could tell that she was trying not to start crying again, and because he knew she was failing at it, that she was grateful to be behind him where he couldn't see her.

* * *

They didn't remember falling asleep but Caspian and Mouth both felt somewhere between the state of consciousness and unconsciousness, then they woke up when they heard something. Silas had been about asleep and heard it too, as did Kronos, who had also managed somehow to fall asleep momentarily. It sounded like somebody playing the old piano downstairs, but there wasn't anybody down there…or was there?

"What is that?" Mouth asked.

Caspian didn't know and he didn't bother answering her. They were already jumping out of bed before they heard the muffled sounds of somebody's voice downstairs who seemed to be yelling, "Merry Christmas!" followed by shouts of "Happy New Year!" and another that oddly enough sounded like the person was yelling, "Fish!" They met up with Silas and Kronos and ran downstairs to see what was going on, they felt another quickening as they raced down the stairs to find out what the hell was going on. Sure enough they could hear somebody playing a horrible rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen on the piano. They ran into the dining room and all thought they had lost their minds when they saw Methos pounding the keys with one hand and holding a bottle of wine in the other. His clothes and hair were wet and he shivered every so often with cold, but otherwise he seemed to be alive and _very_ well.

"It's about time you got down here," he said to him, "When's the party start?"

"Oh my God," Mouth said, "It's his ghost!"

"Ghost?" Methos asked, "We're playing those games already?"

"Methos is that really you?" Kronos couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Methos reached his arm around behind his back and felt along his jacket, "Why, did somebody put a name tag back here?"

Mouth crept over to Methos and reached over and touched his neck and when she saw it was whole she ran back to her husband screaming, "Oh my God, it's real!" and she all but jumped on Caspian's back.

"This is impossible," Kronos said, "We buried you today."

"I know, I saw it," he said, "You really went all out for me, didn't you?"

"How can you be here?" Kronos wanted to know, "We buried you!"

No you didn't," Methos shook his head, "You buried an imposter."

"What?" they all asked.

"Look, I'll be very glad to explain it to everybody, but I'm about to collapse from starvation," Methos said as he moved towards the kitchen.

They all followed after him like he was going to disappear, and all of them were demanding to know what happened. Before he would talk though, he picked up some of the food on the table and shoved it into his mouth; some ham from dinner and then picked up one of the fruitcake loaves and took whole bites out of it.

"He _must_ be starving," Caspian said.

Mouth elbowed him in the ribs and went over to Methos and asked him, "What was that you were talking about an imposter? What the hell has been going on, Methos?"

"It's a long story and I still haven't figured most of it out yet," he told them, "But first of all, I want to apologize for making you all worry. That was never my intention. I know the last few months you all must've thought I had finally snapped, and I was starting to believe it myself. What just about took me over the edge was when I started seeing myself…" he nodded to Mouth, "What I thought was an out-of-body experience, literally _seeing_ myself walk by, when I was in town, out in public and couldn't do anything about it. Now you all know about the Watchers and what they do…apparently the next generation is learning too well what we had to find out the hard way; how _not_ to wind up in the chronicles, how not to wind up in their records."

"What're you talking about?" Kronos asked.

"When the four of you followed me the other night, I was fighting myself," he said, "In a manner of speaking. I had received a message, come up to the hill that night, come alone…and when I arrived, I saw myself…or what I thought was myself. But as it turns out there was a new Immortal who thought I was crowding in on his territory; actually born and christened Adam Pierson, and upon seeing him face to face for the first time, if Immortals could have heart attacks I would've, it was like looking in a mirror. Of course in hindsight I realize there were some differences in us but for the most part, if anybody were to have seen us, we would be mistaken for twins. Somehow he found out about me and didn't appreciate somebody else using his name as a cover and he tried to get me out of the way; after he tried a few months to gaslight me from afar it would seem. So we fought and I killed him, but when I fell off the hill, I hit the rocks below and died.

"Apparently my body was not balanced evenly enough among the rocks and I feel down into the icy river and floated downstream. I came to a few hours after that and the next thing I knew, it was morning and I was starting to drown. I was too far from land to reach it in a comfortable amount of time and there wasn't anyone out who saw me, for which I'm thankful because I don't know _how_ I would've explained my position. It took me a while to reach land and when I did, I was still a long ways from home and slowly worked my way back. I was still weak from the quickening and collapsed in a shack where there wasn't any source of heat, but it kept the wind out and allowed me to freeze in peace. I woke up this morning and as I made my way back into town, I picked up on word about my funeral. Realizing the mistake that had been made, I decided to view from afar just what kind of sendoff you _would_ give me. And when I saw you head for home, I followed, and just got here a few minutes ago."

"You mean to tell me that we buried the wrong person today?" Kronos asked Methos.

"It would seem so, yes," he answered.

"Thank God," Kronos let out a tremendous sigh of relief as he practically collapsed on top of his brother and wrapped his arms around Methos, as if to make sure that he was really here with them.

Mouth looked at the clock and said, "It's after midnight…looks like Christmas is off to a good start."

"I suppose I got one hell of a gift this year," Methos said, "Anybody who knew me as either Adam Pierson _or_ Methos thinks I'm dead now…word will no doubt spread on that, hell, maybe now the file on me in the Watchers will officially close."

"Then nobody would look for you anymore," Caspian realized.

"Well, I guess this _is_ going to be a Merry Christmas after all," Methos said.

"Not yet," Mouth reached behind the counter and grabbed two large bottles of Everclear, "But it will be. Here's something to warm you up."

"And set him on fire," Caspian added.

"Shut up," she told him.

Methos leaned towards Kronos and asked, "Whatever happened to goodwill towards men?"

"Are you kidding?" Kronos asked, "In this family that _is_ goodwill."

"Oh well," Methos said as he poured a drink, "A merry Christmas, notwithstanding."

* * *

Methos opened his eye and glanced at the clock by the bed; 4:15 A.M. The room was somewhat brightly lit from a string of colored Christmas lights that Mouth had taken the courtesy of stringing up around the window frame and he was able to clearly look over and see Kronos, who was in a dead sleep on the other side of the bed. Methos moved in the bed and adjusted the covers.

He remembered back to one Christmas that he spent with Lorraine and the two German twins; they learned quickly how to speak English and sound American but as twins like to speak in their own language, when communicating between themselves they resorted back to their native tongue. He remembered Christmas Eve when they were 9 and he had tucked them in and buried them in an extra set of heavy quilts because the furnace threatened to go out. And during the night he had poked his head in to see if they were asleep, and he heard them quietly speaking to themselves in the dark. Alexia was telling her brother that it wasn't Christmas that mattered, not Christmas day, the morning church service, any of it. What mattered, she had told her brother, was the security of Christmas Eve night as the transition was made from Eve to Christmas itself; every year since they had been adopted, they spent the later part of Christmas Eve night tucked into their large bed, kept plenty warm by the overabundance of quilts and blankets, and in the hours before Christmas morning they felt content and safe. Content because they were full from the night's feast, which was a precursor to the day's big meal, safe because they had a home where they were warm and they were together. And that, she had told her brother, was what Christmas was about and what it meant; to her it meant being safe and belonging with family.

Out of the mouths of babes, he thought as he curled up under the covers. 60 years later he knew that she had been right, if only partially; through this night he had known that same feeling of security, though perhaps for a different reason. With the other Adam Pierson dead, he felt his sanity had been restored to him and that meant more than anything. He had been able to return to his family and the night had passed in the company of his dearest brother, who it turned out when they were alone, was overcome with relief at knowing he was still alive. It seemed to Methos that Kronos had suffered a delayed reaction; when they thought him dead, Kronos hadn't been able to come to full terms with the situation, and it was only when they found out he was alive that Kronos had let out the grief from thinking him dead.

Methos heard a light tapping on the door and he told whoever was there to come in, though he had an idea who it was.

"Don't you ever sleep?" he asked Mouth as she came in, carrying a tray with two teacups on it.

She tiptoed over towards the bed and smiled at him, "Merry Christmas," she whispered.

"Merry Christmas," he replied.

"Did he ever get to sleep?" she asked.

"A couple of hours ago," Methos said.

"I could hear him screaming all the way down the hall," she said as she set the tray on the nightstand, "Thought maybe the tea would help, I'm sure his throat's raw after that."

Methos picked up one of the cups and took in a whiff of the steaming drink, a faint smell of peppermint.

"Thank you," he said as he took a drink.

"So," she said as she sat on the edge of the bed beside him, "Are you okay now?"

"I think so," he said, "And if not, I will be. I'm just sorry I had to put you all through that."

"At least it wasn't permanent," she responded, "But you're really okay now?"

"I think so, yes," Methos told her, "I think I'm going to be _quite_ alright now."

"Good," she said as she leaned in quickly and kissed him.

Methos looked out the darkened window and told her, "We still have a few hours before morning…and the bed can fit three if you'd like to stay."

"Thanks but no thanks," she told him, "I'll be fine in my own bedroom, I just thought I'd see how you were doing before I turned in for the night."

"I appreciate it," he let her know.

"Goodnight," she said as she got up and headed to the door.

"Good morning," Methos replied.

Once she had gone, Methos turned on his side and looked at Kronos who was likewise curled under the covers and had his face buried in the pillows. Methos about hated to wake him up, he looked almost cute, like a demon-possessed child, but he tapped his brother on the shoulder and woke him up. Kronos grumbled something but didn't open his eyes. Methos reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the second cup of tea and pressed it into his brother's hand and told him, "Drink this."

Kronos half sat up but still didn't wake up as he drank the tea and handed the cup back to his brother.

"That's a good boy, now go back to sleep," Methos told him as he pushed him back down.

Kronos grumbled something and fell back asleep almost instantaneously. Methos stroked the back of his head a couple of times and pulled the covers up on both of them and contentedly lay down beside his brother and fell asleep, feeling for the first time in months like his old self again. Yes, he had a feeling that this was going to be a good Christmas. Then he remembered that the next morning he'd probably be refereeing between his brother and sister-in-law again and he said under his breath, "God help us, everyone." And with a light chuckle he tossed and turned a bit to get comfortable as he got ready to go to sleep for the night. Family he could handle.

"But I'll tell you something," he said to Kronos, who was peacefully oblivious to what he was saying, "I think we're just about to wear out our welcome here. Can't say it hasn't been fun though." He leaned over and kissed Kronos on the top of his head and said, "Merry Christmas, brother."


End file.
